Knee Deep In Mud

A month into the rainy season has taught me a few things:
1. Never take a sunny day for granted. When you see sun, you should wash your laundry, even if you don’t need to that day, because you never know when you’ll see sun again.
2. You clothes can take up to a week and a half to dry.
3. My water-proof gortex boots, pants, and jacket were among the smartest of my packing choices.
4. It doesn’t really matter how good the traction is on your boots, 5 steps into walking you’ll have 2 pounds of mud affixed to the bottom no matter what.
5. Sometimes chacos are a better bet than boots. When you know you’ll sink knee deep into the mud, chacos are easier to wash off, and you can wear them wet unlike boots.
6. Peruvians have small feet, and I can’t find knee high rain boots in my size.
7. Bugs hate the rain too…so they go into hiding in your room if you don’t shove cardboard under your door when you’re not in your room. (oh and this system makes it a pain to use the bathroom at night)
8. It can still be 110 degrees outside when it’s raining. Yeah, that blew my mind too.
9. No one cares if you bring mud into their house, because their shoes are covered in mud too.
10. Electricity is amazing, and it sucks to live without it for 2 weeks when you have work that needs to get done on your computer.
11. There is a Peruvian radio station that plays American music (I discovered this when my iPod battery died and I couldn’t charge it due to lack of electricity)
12. Head Lamps are one of the greatest inventions ever made.
13. It is possible for a water pipe to get washed away by rain (…ironic no?) and leave a town waterless for a week.
14. It is possible to take a shower in the rain here in Peru and to prove it we have an outside shower stall (4 plastic sheets hanging from a tree) that I have used. It just takes a lil patience to get the shampoo out.
15. Ducks love the rain because it turns our patio into a lake, and they can ACTUALY swim in the water at times…it’s that deep.
16. It’s acceptable to call your pants that are covered in mud and have been worn for the past 4 days in a row your “good pants.”
17. Some days you can cross the river to make it out to Chiclayo…some days you can’t. Last week was a can’t, hopefully tomorrow is a can.
18. Brown water can be drunk. You just have to put it in a big bucket, wait a few hours for the crud to settle, pour out the stuff that looks clean into a towel over another bucket, and then boil it. And in my case cross my fingers that I still don’t get sick…eww.

Just a few things I’ve come to find over the past month. The rainy season’s been a very interesting time here in Nanchoc, and I’m told there’s another 2 more months to go…let’s just hope that the river plays nice and I can make it out for Reconnect in March, because I miss my Peace Corps people and wanna play on the beach with them!